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New LightWave 10 looks light on new features

LightWave 10 was unveiled at SIGGRAPH on Tuesday. There's now support for …

Ars is on the ground at SIGGRAPH for the first time. Over the next couple of days, keep your eyes peeled for news from the world's largest conference on computer graphics and 3D.

NewTek software is at the conference showing off the newly announced LightWave 10. It's a bit light on the new, with the new viewport preview rendering, which offers realistic views of scenes and objects with interactive light, nodal shading, and scene set-up, really the only standout from the list.

There's also CG hardware real-time viewpoint shading and linear workflow support. Version 10 also adds support for the Autodesk Geometry Cache, COLLADA, FBX, and ZBrush interchange, along with handful of new real-time and game tools.

Although the inclusion of the renowned and speedy Bullet Physics is encouraging, the rest of the feature list reads like a padded résumé that isn’t going to help LightWave get out of the funk it's widely perceived to be in. While there are still many people who like the application, it has lost most of its relevance in film and television. NewTek has lost a lot of face after after key engineers defected and created Luxology, and its well-respected modeler, modo. At this point, NewTek needs to just release something to stay relevant. If the linear workflow hits the market by the end of the year, at least it will beat Autodesk’s Maya.

LightWave 10 will begin shipping in the fourth quarter of 2010 in both 32- and 64-bit versions for Windows and Mac OS. Suggested retail price is $1,495 and upgrades will be US$695.

36 Reader Comments

I like that, "key engineers defected". If you mean Allen Hastings and Stuart Ferguson....the guys that have been working together all the way back in the Amiga days writing Videoscape 3D and then on to develop Lightwave for NewTek...I think "THE" engineers is more apropos.

I even remember an AmigaWorld show in Chicago where Allen was asking people for a name suggestion for the product that eventually became Lightwave. To show you how much a geek I was back then, I was talking more with Allen that I was with Kiki Stockhammer...who always had a crowd around her.

Yikes! $695 to upgrade? I haven't paid attention to what they are releasing so they'll have to dazzle me to grab that much of my coin. Maybe if the viewport rendering is as good as Fprime, one of the few high-end add-ons that still seems useful to a non-pro like myself (along with LWCad).

spellcheck insanity: "...which offers realistic views of sciences and objects with interactive light..." should likely be "...which offers realistic views of scenes and objects with interactive light..." (edit: sent a note to editors@arstechnica.com)

one important addition is the inclusion of "core". while its not a full application yet and currently in development, it is set to overtake lightwave kind of like xsi did for softimage3d. core on its own has a lot of bullet points going for it, customization and extendibility being a couple important ones.

as for the mac version crashing, yeah it did a lot- you can thank allen and stuart, which the first poster mentions, for that- im not using the mac version, but i believe the latest 9.6 is rather solid on mac now in comparison.

What's interesting to me is that — starting over a year ago — they jacked up their prices, cut their sidegrades, and included previews of "Lightwave Core" that is now over a year behind schedule. It's an interesting example of a marketing plan being completely out of sync with engineering.

I think the problem a lot of 3D vendors face is the Autodesk Hegemony on the one hand (how much of the new feature set is essentially Autodesk interoperability?), Blender on the other (although the transition to 2.5 has meant Blender has, like Lightwave, started to lag in features), and the lingering effects of the price war between Maya and XSI which has changed the entire industry price structure. (Lightwave was being sold for $595 as a sidegrade from Photoshop a little over a year ago — a sidegrade from Photoshop is effectively a retail price in this market.)

What's interesting to me is that — starting over a year ago — they jacked up their prices, cut their sidegrades, and included previews of "Lightwave Core" that is now over a year behind schedule. It's an interesting example of a marketing plan being completely out of sync with engineering.

I think the problem a lot of 3D vendors face is the Autodesk Hegemony on the one hand (how much of the new feature set is essentially Autodesk interoperability?), Blender on the other (although the transition to 2.5 has meant Blender has, like Lightwave, started to lag in features), and the lingering effects of the price war between Maya and XSI which has changed the entire industry price structure. (Lightwave was being sold for $595 as a sidegrade from Photoshop a little over a year ago — a sidegrade from Photoshop is effectively a retail price in this market.)

I am not sure about the cheap price. It was 1500~3000 range back in 90s. If you buy it with 3D toaster, it costs even more. But the market is pretty much too saturated with the autodesk users.

Why is there a price war with Maya and XSI since it all flows back to Autodesk anyway. Last I checked, they were both owned by Autodesk...unless they sold one of them off recently.

Never understood Autodesk having the big 3 in 3D....Max, Maya and XSI....which all do essentially the same thing. Yeah, I realize you're gobbling up the competition, but isn't it more of a headache than anything trying to juggle all 3?

You kidding me? If I had the opportunity to get a glimpse of Kiki Stockhammer, lord knows I'd take it. And talk about a blast from the past too, cuz I haven't heard that name in ages... but damn I still remember the ads with that redhead on them.

Anyways, back to LW, while I respect what NewTek has done (especially their history with the Amiga), I have never personally been a fan of LW. The user interface is just god awful in my opinion - very clunky and backwards to my 3D app of choice - 3DS MAX. I wish LW the best, simply because it is nice to have a non-AutoDesk 3D program out there, but damn working with that program makes me want to pull my hair out.

They're stuck in a hard place. A lot (in fact, pretty much all) of their future was staked on their next-gen "Core" architecture, which while promising is still a way off being turned into a complete feature-rich application. Layout and Modeller will benefit from these new features which are highly production-focused and welcome. VPR alone justifies an upgrade for most pro LW users, though at this stage we don't know how it compares to Fprime. It's pretty impressive in Core though.

I'm still using LW after many years because it's the best 3D app for the kind of work I do. Though I'm very curious to try and get into Houdini, which is one of the apps that Core is kind of aspiring to be in its design.

First, I'm shocked to see anything about lightwave in "print". Newtek has been marginalizing lightwave for years, never putting in the effort to really re-code this software to contend with other packages. Lightwave helped me make a career in VFX: Star Trek Voyager and Enterprise, Battlestar Galactica, etc... I was a loyal user for well over 12 years, but there's been a shift and there's no going back. Studios are dumping Lightwave. The only hangers-on seem to be the really small cottage houses (and even then you would be hard pressed not to find a copy of Maya in house). About 6 years ago I started ramping up on Maya (I could see which way the wind was blowing) and I'm thankful I did. Only a fraction of the jobs I work these days come from Lightwave... it's mostly Maya.

Don't get me wrong: Maya has all kinds of stink on it too. But it is **the** standard. And because Autodesk is pretty much the only game anymore, Maya is it. Personally I was hoping to make the switch to Softimage... but that was before Autodesk purchased it. There's no telling what they're going to do with it (think Combustion).

What's sad is Lightwave is such a workhorse. It has a super-fast, beautiful render engine. It can handle a whole mess of polys. And in a pinch, it can just "get the job done". But in order to get anything substantial out of it you have to hack and hack and hack, finding ridiculous work-arounds! I will still keep it and use it where I can (great for spaceships and cars; anything hard-body). But I have a feeling it will continue fading in my arsenal until its use has finally diminished to zero.

As for Modo, don't make me laugh. How long? And it's still not a full package!

And XSI, how I longed to use thee (so pretty and useful with an interface of buttons with text rather than stupid nonsensical icons). But I can't trust that Autodesk won't pillage your best bits then kick you to the curb.

You know, some part of me had always held out hope that Pixar would release Marionette to the public. Renderman is already a HUGE standard, so why not the front end? Release it in conjunction with Apple/Disney (letting Apple handle all the headache tech issue calls and marketing). I mean Apple, Disney and Pixar are all in the same bed. This makes a lot of sense. And Apple could make a boatload of money if the front-end worked "best" on the MacPro line (although ported to PC as well). It would be interesting to watch Autodesk scramble for once rather than gobble up everybody else.

Autodesk is working on a new unified viewport architecture (in Maya 2011, it's called Viewport 2) to better-handle huge scenes. You can see it chews through 15-million polygons at around 30FPS on a lowly 4870 512MB:

Autodesk is working on a new unified viewport architecture (in Maya 2011, it's called Viewport 2) to better-handle huge scenes. You can see it chews through 15-million polygons at around 30FPS on a lowly 4870 512MB:

Makes me wonder if they aren't peeling code from Softimage. Soft had the "gigapoly" function for years now. I have to say, it would be nice if Maya would stop choking on high-poly scenes. It's probably the single most frustrating item on my bitch-list. Nothing is more upsetting than being on a deadline and waiting Maya to refresh. Next up, Autodesk will introduce ICE for Maya. :-)

You know, some part of me had always held out hope that Pixar would release Marionette to the public. Renderman is already a HUGE standard, so why not the front end? Release it in conjunction with Apple/Disney (letting Apple handle all the headache tech issue calls and marketing). I mean Apple, Disney and Pixar are all in the same bed. This makes a lot of sense. And Apple could make a boatload of money if the front-end worked "best" on the MacPro line (although ported to PC as well). It would be interesting to watch Autodesk scramble for once rather than gobble up everybody else.

Pixar dabbled in consumer 3D in the early 90's with MacRenderman and later Glimpse and Showcase..which weren't modelers per-se bur more of a scene placement software. It really didn't go anywhere. Also, many may not remember this, but Renderman (a form of it) was built into the NeXT OS for a time there.

Besides, I always thought that Pixar was a Maya house in terms of modeling. But geez, I'm so far removed now from that world I have no idea. When I was doing it, there were really only a handful of people and Pixar was still a marginal player....Toy Story hadn't even come out yet and they had JUST won the Oscar for Tin Toy. It was a land-rush into 3D at the time....I just didn't participate and instead went into the pre-press industry....which is now in it's twilight years.

First, I'm shocked to see anything about lightwave in "print". Newtek has been marginalizing lightwave for years, never putting in the effort to really re-code this software to contend with other packages. Lightwave helped me make a career in VFX: Star Trek Voyager and Enterprise, Battlestar Galactica, etc... I was a loyal user for well over 12 years, but there's been a shift and there's no going back. Studios are dumping Lightwave. The only hangers-on seem to be the really small cottage houses (and even then you would be hard pressed not to find a copy of Maya in house). About 6 years ago I started ramping up on Maya (I could see which way the wind was blowing) and I'm thankful I did. Only a fraction of the jobs I work these days come from Lightwave... it's mostly Maya.

Don't get me wrong: Maya has all kinds of stink on it too. But it is **the** standard. And because Autodesk is pretty much the only game anymore, Maya is it. Personally I was hoping to make the switch to Softimage... but that was before Autodesk purchased it. There's no telling what they're going to do with it (think Combustion).

What's sad is Lightwave is such a workhorse. It has a super-fast, beautiful render engine. It can handle a whole mess of polys. And in a pinch, it can just "get the job done". But in order to get anything substantial out of it you have to hack and hack and hack, finding ridiculous work-arounds! I will still keep it and use it where I can (great for spaceships and cars; anything hard-body). But I have a feeling it will continue fading in my arsenal until its use has finally diminished to zero.

As for Modo, don't make me laugh. How long? And it's still not a full package!

And XSI, how I longed to use thee (so pretty and useful with an interface of buttons with text rather than stupid nonsensical icons). But I can't trust that Autodesk won't pillage your best bits then kick you to the curb.

You know, some part of me had always held out hope that Pixar would release Marionette to the public. Renderman is already a HUGE standard, so why not the front end? Release it in conjunction with Apple/Disney (letting Apple handle all the headache tech issue calls and marketing). I mean Apple, Disney and Pixar are all in the same bed. This makes a lot of sense. And Apple could make a boatload of money if the front-end worked "best" on the MacPro line (although ported to PC as well). It would be interesting to watch Autodesk scramble for once rather than gobble up everybody else.

Just sayin'...

(***edited for spelling)

As an interesting observation/side-note: the only thing that seems to keep Lightwave's heart beating is the ability to use it with Maya. You can translate/transfer scenes back and forth (partially!) using software like Point Oven or The Beaver Project, and some places like Zoic Studios have authored their own pipeline. Just about every Lightwave job I've had in the past 5 - 6 years, where Lighwave was a player (mainly as a renderer) involved Maya in some way.

Besides, I always thought that Pixar was a Maya house in terms of modeling. But geez, I'm so far removed now from that world I have no idea. When I was doing it, there were really only a handful of people and Pixar was still a marginal player....Toy Story hadn't even come out yet and they had JUST won the Oscar for Tin Toy. It was a land-rush into 3D at the time....I just didn't participate and instead went into the pre-press industry....which is now in it's twilight years.

But hey, good times right?[/quote]

Good times, indeed!

As for modeling, that's an interesting point. My experience: modeling is no longer tied to one piece of software. A model can come from anywhere. A lot of people use Modo or Lightwave strictly for their polygonal modelers (because they're quite good). But we get models from Maya, tons from zBrush these days (because it's sort of a miracle piece of software), 3DS, wherever. It really doesn't matter, so long as the modeler provides you with clean geometry. Once you get the model into the pipeline and start generating UVs and texturing and rigging and animation (yadda yadda), that's when you settle down and live with the package you're using.

As a hobbyist who experiments with 3D modeling applications, I would really like to see Ars perform a comparison between 3D Studio Max, Maya, LightWave, SoftImage, and Rhino. It would be nice to see what features each of the applications offer, their strengths, and what industries most of them are geared towards.

A featured story that really dives into these applications would just be plain awesomeness!

As a hobbyist who experiments with 3D modeling applications, I would really like to see Ars perform a comparison between 3D Studio Max, Maya, LightWave, SoftImage, and Rhino. It would be nice to see what features each of the applications offer, their strengths, and what industries most of them are geared towards.

A featured story that really dives into these applications would just be plain awesomeness!

As a hobbyist who experiments with 3D modeling applications, I would really like to see Ars perform a comparison between 3D Studio Max, Maya, LightWave, SoftImage, and Rhino. It would be nice to see what features each of the applications offer, their strengths, and what industries most of them are geared towards.

A featured story that really dives into these applications would just be plain awesomeness!

Just get the demos and try them out yourself.

Yup, getting the demo will tell you a lot about how it's going to work on your system. So, yes, certainly do that!

On the other hand I could see the benefit for a comparison. Getting a demo is a fine start but the demo won't necessarily tell you things like how many polygons you can have in a scene, the primary renderer, how many nodes of the renderer you can use (MentalRay, I'm looking at you! which can be a sticky issue with these new mega-multi-core boxes coming out), are they cross-platform, what comes in the base package, are cloth, hair, dynamics included, or extra? Etc... it would actually be nice to see a grid of features, limitations, price, etc... Particularly price, because with so many companies (Autodesk, I'm looking at you) offering one price, but then charging you something else because they failed to mention the yearly Platinum fee (or whatever!), it gets a little confusing. (It would also be interesting to get a state-of-the-industry insider panel to discuss the software; people from major studios like ILM, Digital Domain, as well as folks who teach and just plain artists who use and the engineers who code; no, I'm not throwing my hat in the ring... but it would be an interesting read.)

IMHO: if you're looking in the Autodesk family (3DS, Softimage, Maya), the best bet is Maya. That's if you want to work on any kind of consistent basis. If looking outside, then it's probably going to be Lightwave (unless Modo pulls a fully functional package out of it's decade-old hat). If you're a hobbyist: heck, Blender is pretty darn powerful... and free.

Insider tip: if you want to learn and own one of the pro-packages, I suggest signing up for a few credit hours at a community college (cheapest you can find). Get a student ID. Then buy the fully-functional student version. They are super-cheap and sometimes you can find a deal where Autodesk gives you Maya, Softimage, 3DS, Mudbox and MotionBuilder in one package for around $350. But, please, for goodness sake, don't steal them! My understanding is the profits are horribly low. Plus you can get student discounts on hardware as well.

I'd like to see that comparison grid and some thoughtful analysis comparing the major packages. Crash resistance is tough to gauge until you are deep into a model or scene. My two cents on the grid -- tell me if it requires a dongle, lol.

As a hobbyist who experiments with 3D modeling applications, I would really like to see Ars perform a comparison between 3D Studio Max, Maya, LightWave, SoftImage, and Rhino. It would be nice to see what features each of the applications offer, their strengths, and what industries most of them are geared towards.

A featured story that really dives into these applications would just be plain awesomeness!

Yes, I'd love to have that review as well. Unfortuantely, just glossing over the features doesn't tell you much. You really need to have worked with each tool over a long period of time to really appreciate the pros and cons.

I am working on a second piece to follow up my 3D modelling and texturing on the Mac. It talks more loosely about animation and rendering, covering what's done and what some program advantages are. It's almost done. It covers some PC-only options like Softimage just to go into what's out there so it's not just for OS X. If you didn't see the first piece, it's here:

As for Pixar, they use Maya and Mudbox for asset creation but a variety of in-house tools like Marionette for the real heavy lifting and animation. They probably use Maya for pre-vis. I don't know what they use for compositing, but everyone's pretty much using Nuke now.

Insider tip: if you want to learn and own one of the pro-packages, I suggest signing up for a few credit hours at a community college (cheapest you can find). Get a student ID. Then buy the fully-functional student version. They are super-cheap and sometimes you can find a deal where Autodesk gives you Maya, Softimage, 3DS, Mudbox and MotionBuilder in one package for around $350. But, please, for goodness sake, don't steal them! My understanding is the profits are horribly low. Plus you can get student discounts on hardware as well.

An even bigger "steal" you can get in on is over here on Autodesk's site; all you need is a verifiable EDU email and you can get student versions for nothing. So sign up for that community college class and get in on some fun learning!

(As a side note, I actually use this at the university I work at to get the installers in a timely manner. We have a subscription with them, but it still takes them a verifiable age to mail us media; we can get our network license file in hours via email, but the media takes forever.)

As a LightWave hobbyist my understanding is that it excels in being a well-rounded package that allows a single person to produce compelling results (e.g. model, texture, rig, light, animate, and render) whereas Maya, XSI, Houdini and some of the others have a much higher learning curve, requiring artists to specialize.

You guys need to get over the whole Softimage being robbed of its best parts and put into Maya or Max idea, because that cannot happen based on how its coded. The complex code architecture of Face Robot and ICE will never be integrated into Max or Maya. If you need to use Face Robot, ICE, or even the new Lagoa Multiphysics then you will have to go through Softimage to do it. Remember that Softimage is the grandfather to Maya and Max. Soft has been around a long time and will continue to be around for a long time. Max and Maya are the ones with code architectures built on shaky foundations not Soft. Softimage is rising again in sales, popularity, and usage so there's no way Autodesk is going to let it go or ever chop it into pieces.

Let's hope. ICE looks amazing. I've never used SoftImage, but I've watched some of the ICE demo videos, and found it very impressive.

edit: Then there's the post right above mine, so maybe it's just a pipe dream on my part I can't tell whether RazorX3D's certainty is from knowledge of the codebase or from fierce loyalty to a much-loved piece of software, though.

I'm a programmer of 11 years, so your "knowledge of" comment would be correct. On a recent Autodesk webinar, demoing Softimage 2011, a participant asked directly if ICE could be added to Maya or Max and the answer was "no". And if that's not enough one of the Softimage UI engineers recently put out a tweet on Twitter squashing rumors of a Mayaxsi and that all three products would continue forward as normal. If anyone tries to say ICE or Face Robot will be incorporated into Max or Maya, then that person is simply misinformed and just demonstrating wishful thinking contrary to fact.

On the programming side, and to gain some perspective, you have to understand that Face Robot alone took several years to develop as a collaboration between the Softimage Special Projects team and Blur Studio.

The incorporation rumors mainly stem from the recent announcement of Softimage being added into the Autodesk Maya and Max Premium suites. A few Soft users have complained that because of the Maya and Max top labels, it makes Soft look like a plugin and maybe Autodesk's plan is to chop Soft up, however, this is not at all the case. The situation is that the Maya and Max users are the ones asking for ICE and Face Robot, so Autodesk is giving them what they want in a reduced package price. Autodesk is not stupid. They know Soft is becoming a hot item and they will never chop it up only to turn around and incorporate it into Max and Maya for "free". Autodesk also knows adding Soft into the Premium suites will give rise to a greater number of studios using ICE, Face Robot, and Soft in general. Softimage slipped into the suites is not a detriment to its demise, but is a move that will only result in a usage boost for Soft. So in all actuality Softimage users should be happy about that. Before the Autodesk acquisition Softimage was unfairly the victim of poor marketing, but now it is finally getting some real help. What Autodesk is doing is a smart marketing move in Soft's favor. Once you look at it from those perspectives you start to understand their reasons.

I know these comments are supposed to be about LW10 and I apologize for the SI tangent. To add to it though, looking at the new LW10 features, I personally don't see the usage of LW10 as ever being prominent in high-end studios... smaller studios and hobbyists yes.

"Lastly, as far as the suites go I can understand some of the negative comments. A few people at Siggraph told me it felt like Softimage was just becoming a bolt on or a glorified plug-in in the eyes of Autodesk... nothing could be farther from the truth. I know there was a lot of discussion internally on how best to market these new suites with the overwhelming priority being getting Softimage in more artists hands. That's still Softimages Achilles heel, simply not enough people know how awesome it is, the suites WILL help! " - Mark Schoennagel.

So there you have it. Softimage will never be a plugin for Maya and Max and its inclusion in the Premium suites is a marketing effort to help it gain in usage and mind share.

As a small studio using LightWave 9.6.1 on Macs and PCs alike, it's proven solid on both platforms. We do use Maestro for character anim, LWCAD for modelling and FPrime - plus a few others, but LW10's VPR realtime renderer seems close to FPrime's ability except it only works in the full screen, forcing it to render at screen res. It'd be great to have a pullout option, but this is v1.0 of this feature so there's time. The other plugs aren't updated yet, though LWCAD isn't far away I've been told.

There's not doubting LW is a bit long in the tooth in a few areas, but as a small studio the AD upgrade system is just something we'd rather avoid. LightWave offers one of the best upgrade policies out there, and you don't get heavily penalised for jumping full point upgrades. LW Core is promised as an eventual replacement for classic LW, and we can see some of the code bleeding into LW classic, such as VPR in LW10. I wouldn't be suprised to see this happen over the next few iterations of LW Classic, whilst Core is being worked on.

As a small generalist studio, LW is a decent tool, andit lets us get jobs done quickly and to a decent quality - our clients have never complained. The alternative options are far from perfect, and the pricing policies smack too much of greed and wanting to have you by the curlies. No thanks AD. I'm sticking my money on LightWave, I'll keep my eyes on the competition (as always), but I sincerely hope NewTek can pull the Core rabbit out of the hat.